Adachi leak: Lawyer for journalist fights...

1of4Security video shows San Francisco police executing a search warrant at the home of Bryan Carmody on Fri. May 10, 2019.Photo: Bryan Carmody

2of4San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott is giving his Chief's Report to the Police Commission meeting on Wednesday, May 15, 2019, in San Francisco, CA.Photo: Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle

3of4Public defender Jeff Adachi listens in during a news conference outside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Santiago Mejia / Special to The Chronicle 2016

4of4San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi leaves a courtroom following the arraignment of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 7, 2015.Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

San Francisco police illegally seized computers and other property during “violent and breathtakingly overbroad” searches of a journalist’s home and office while trying to figure out who leaked him a police report into the death of Public Defender Jeff Adachi, an attorney for the journalist wrote in a court filing Thursday.

The lawyer, Thomas Burke, filed a motion to quash search warrants and return property to freelance videographer Bryan Carmody, arguing police and judges violated state and federal laws, including Carmody’s right to due process and California’s shield law that protects journalists from being compelled to identify sources.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Samuel Feng is scheduled to hear the motion Tuesday at the Hall of Justice.

City police officers raided Carmody “after obtaining plainly invalid warrants,” wrote Burke. He said officers “carried out an egregiously overbroad and intrusive search, violently breaking into Mr. Carmody’s home, threatening him with drawn guns, and seizing dozens of communications devices after rummaging through his residence and home for hours while he sat in handcuffs despite posing no conceivable threat.”

After showing up with a sledgehammer at Carmody’s Outer Richmond home Friday morning, police seized 68 items, including computers, phones, cameras, and notebooks, wrote Burke, who has represented The Chronicle and its parent company, Hearst Corp., in other cases.

Free-press advocates including the First Amendment Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists have condemned the raid. On Thursday, the San Francisco Press Club sent a letter to the city district attorney’s office and the state Department of Justice urging “a full investigation.”

California’s shield law applies to freelance journalists like Carmody, advocates said. Carmody said the Police Department has issued him a press pass — an image of which was included in the court filing. The First Amendment Coalition and other groups filed a separate motion to unseal the search warrants signed by two San Francisco Superior Court judges authorizing the raid.

Carmody has worked as a freelance videographer in the Bay Area for 29 years. He often listens to police scanners all night, ready to chase a crime story, a fire or a car wreck. He said he obtained the police report from a confidential source while trying to track down the location where Adachi died on Feb. 22. He sold the report, along with video from the scene and other information, to three television news stations, he said.

The police report was written by one of the officers who responded to the Telegraph Hill apartment where Adachi collapsed. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Details of the report soon appeared on television and in news articles, including that Adachi was at an apartment with an unidentified woman who was not his wife. Some city officials immediately accused members of the Police Department of trying to smear a man who fought misconduct by law enforcement, and they demanded an investigation during an April hearing called by Supervisor Sandra Fewer.

The Chronicle also obtained a copy of the report, but did not pay for it or get it from Carmody. Two months after Adachi’s death, the city medical examiner confirmed many details in the leaked report, finding that Adachi died from a mix of cocaine and alcohol along with heart disease.

Police Chief Bill Scott said Wednesday he was “confident we took the appropriate legal matters to get the search authorized.”

“We have to do our jobs and make sure reports are not released when they are not supposed to be released,” Scott told the city Police Commission at its weekly meeting. “If there’s criminal activity that’s proven, we want to get to the bottom of that.”

Mayor London Breed said in a statement this week that the police force “went through the appropriate legal process to request a search warrant, which was approved by two judges.”

Police officers filed the warrants under seal, so it is not clear how they described Carmody’s job in affidavits to the court. The judges, Victor Hwang and Gail Dekreon, have not commented. Police did not consult the district attorney’s office when applying for the warrant, Scott said.

The chief declined to release details of the investigation and has not said if the order to raid Carmody’s home came from within the Internal Affairs Bureau or from him.

Two police inspectors visited Carmody last month and asked him to reveal his source, Carmody said. When he declined, they came back with a warrant and attempted to smash through the front gate of his home with a sledgehammer. Two FBI agents questioned Carmody during the raid, and tried to get him to reveal his source, he said.

It’s not clear if police are investigating Carmody as a suspect in the case. Scott said the warrant “represents a step in the process of investigating a criminal case of a criminal incident and the illegal distribution of a confidential leaked report.”

Adachi’s wife, Mutsuko Adachi, and newly appointed Public Defender Mano Raju do not want Carmody prosecuted in the case — a message that has been relayed to city prosecutors, the public defender’s office said Thursday. Raju had initially appeared to support the raid before releasing a statement saying he “does not condone or support excessive police actions ever.”

Evan Sernoffsky is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle specializing in criminal justice, crime and breaking news. He’s covered some of the biggest Bay Area news stories in recent memory, including wildfires, mass shootings and criminal justice reform efforts in San Francisco. He has given a voice to victims in some of the region’s biggest tragedies, carefully putting himself in challenging situations to make sure their stories are told. He works out of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice where he keeps watch on the city’s courts and hits the streets to expose the darker side of a city undergoing rapid change. He moved to the Bay Area from Oregon where he grew up and worked as a journalist for several years.